The Shameful Chagos Fiasco

It's virtue signaling again, plain and simple.

The Westminster Parliament is now deciding whether or not to ratify a treaty committing the UK to surrender sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, including the strategic military base of Diego Garcia, to Mauritius. It shouldn’t.

The treaty presents itself as correcting the injustice done when 1,700 Chagossians were forced to leave their homes, to make way for the military base, in 1967-73. In its preamble, the two governments “recognis[e] the wrongs of the past” and declare themselves “committed to supporting the welfare of all Chagossians”.

Chagossians protest the deal, demanding their right to stay British. Credit: Lucinda Adam/BBC

Yet the process producing the treaty hardly bears this out. The Chagossians themselves were barely consulted, probably because it’s known that many—perhaps most—strongly resist subjection to Mauritian rule. The House of Lords’ International Relations and Defence Committee met with members of the Chagossian community in both the UK and Mauritius and reported “unanimous dissatisfaction with the consultation processes conducted by both the UK and Mauritian governments”.

Moreover, the treaty binds the Mauritian government to do next to nothing for them. Oddly, Article 6 declares that Mauritius is “free” to implement a programme of resettlement. However, if, as Article 1 prematurely concedes, Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Islands, it goes without saying that it is free to do as it chooses. It doesn’t need stating. So, the effect of stating it is to highlight the fact that Mauritius has refused any obligation to resettle the islanders.

Article 11 commits the UK to provide capital of £40 million to create a trust fund for the islanders, but it leaves the Mauritian government entirely free to choose how to use it, even though its record of trusteeship is very poor. When, in 1972, Mauritius received from the UK £650,000 (worth £7.7 million today) to compensate displaced islanders, it withheld the money in punitive retaliation for Chagossian protests for six years, during which time inflation collapsed its value. And, again, nine years after it was given £40 million in 2016, to improve Chagossian welfare, it has only disbursed £1.3 million under restrictive conditions.

This treaty is less about doing the Chagossians justice than about offloading responsibility for doing it to Mauritius. As with all virtue-signalling, it loudly advertises its solidarity with victims without actually coming to their aid.